


The Unkindler of Stars

by Lemon_Tea



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Astrophysics, Hawking's Radiation, Temptation, Varda being stupidly powerful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7282648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemon_Tea/pseuds/Lemon_Tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the aftermath of Thangorodrim's fall and the breaking of Melkor's rule over Middle Earth, Varda Elentári takes time to reflect on her treacherous brother. So much time that she might fall prey to temptation, in fact...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unkindler of Stars

 

_Dead stars, still burn_   
_Dead still, stars burn._

\- Covenant, _Dead Stars_

 

_It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space Void or Time._   
_For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void;_   
_in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow._   
_This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility,_   
_sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit._   
_In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own._

_-_ Giordano Bruno, _On the Infinite Universe and Worlds_  (1584)

 

 

The Unkindler of Stars

 

 

She walks on the surface of the star, where its tongues of fires, tired and old, reddened in their age and effort, come to lick at the cold beyond; there She walks, and upon walking, reflects. Her stride unaffected by fire or void, She chose, might be out of fancy, might be out of habit, the form She coated Herself with in the course of battles. Blood and iron, thunder and dragon-fire marred not Her garments, and even the star's wheezing breath does little to even shake it, in the wind of sparkles lost to the void, each of them hotter than all of the Children's furnaces put together. She puts Her palm down to touch at the skin of the star, in a manner not unlike that of the Children when one of Yavanna's beasts is lying down, wounded or ill, and they try to lend them if not strength, at least comfort. She has seen that gesture many times, and She has learned to understand and respect it.

 

Though it's not a beast that She soothes, it's not the pale fire of a furnace or of the bowels of Arda She put her fingers into, and even the Smith would have a hard time beckoning and taming it. If it even were possible. Save for the One, only another could withstand the fire meeting Her hand, and this another does not partakes in such things. She feels what's beneath Her hand. Layers, each of them growing harder, denser, and hotter the more She proceeds towards the core. Just outside of its heart, the dying star is trying, in a panicked effort not unlike those She saw in Yavanna's beasts, to defend its equilibrium, and in its foolishness, it breaks all limits and resorts to coating its heart with carbon.

It's a mistake. 

Or, She thinks again, not truly a mistake. It's something else, more like a choice made for the star since the first moment it coalesced out of dust and darkness, and shone young and proud, its wailing not one of cries but one of light. And yet. It's not the star making the choice, is it? It's the Song. And the star cannot escape the Song, not any more than She can, not any more her Beloved can, not any more their brother could. Not in the end. The thought is an unbridled one, and She has not the luck of the Children, who can shy truths away from their mind. Everything is present to Her, and She comes back to the moment Their brother cried and bowed and scraped at the earth with his talons, acrid fumes still coming from where his flesh was eaten away by the remaining Silmarils, unrelenting in their punishment, as devoid of mercy in this work as their maker was devoid of sense. She sees the saddened curve in Her beloved's face, sad and still far from understanding. His voice heavy as He pronounces their brother's doom. She sees Aulë as he passes His hand on the walls of the fortress, pain on His brow, as clear as Yavanna's while She beheld the marring of Beleriand; He withdraws them after a while, and rubs them together, as if to clean them. Tulkas is the only one who's laughing. He laughs as He puts His hands on their brother, He laughs as He breaks both of their brother's legs, He laughs as Aulë passes him the Angainor. Ulmo is not with them. He did not wish to see their brother's demise. Yet it's not Tulkas who spites their brother in the end. It's Yavanna, coming forth from the darkness, and in Her wake stone rumbles, because Her stride is one of vengeance. And it's Her hands taking away from their brother's head his iron crown, iron which now bends and shrieks under Yavanna's hands, and it's like water and rain and roots had a thousand years under the Sun to break it and turn it into reddened ashes, as in a blink She only holds the Silmarils in Her hands, and Her hands are unmarred, and She holds Her hand for all to see, for their brother to see. At last their brother is broken. And yet. And yet, as their brother is taken away to be put into the Void, as he slithers and crawls and scrapes beneath all of Them, She looks down at his broken form, and their brother looks up to Her, and in his blackened eyes She recognizes something else. Something other than rage, sorrow, something even more bitter to their brother than the deep frustration he showed to the embrace of Tulkas. And only then Their brother gives out in despaired screams.

She came out there not to see the end of a star, but to find an answer to that look in Their brother's eyes. Beneath Her, the star comes to an unexpected discovery: burning carbon is a bit like eating itself. It shivers as this awareness shakes its core, and reverberates in a great pulse of wind strong enough to flatten even the mighty Pelóri, strong enough to rip from the surface of Arda Her beloved's winds, Ulmo's seas, and to burn Aulë's furnaces. It's almost time. 

Why did their treacherous brother look at Her with fear? More than fear. More than fear. More akin to terror, more akin to a horse's terror upon jumping into a deep crevice, and one filled with fire, with barbs and thorns and blades and the bones of its fathers. More akin to a sense of utter defeat, something not even Yavanna's gesture could etch into his skin. The question is alive inside Her, and it prompts something inside Her mind. Their brother only ever fled before one of Them, and that was Tulkas. She looks down into the star's bowels, and She truly has only moments before the last beat of its heart breaks it all apart. This one step on its surface will be Her last.

 

Or will it be? 

 

She wills something else inside its heart. A crease of worry travels across Her brow as She wonders, for an instant, how far removed this deed is from those of their treacherous brother. She wills a shell of oxygen inside the star, a dam against the incoming tide. It won't hold for long, just enough time to bring Her towards Her next decision, whatever that might be. Would Her beloved, would Her brothers and sisters look upon this deed of her with disdain? Aulë would likely be most fascinated. Yavanna would look upon the renewed star with maybe fleeting curiosity, if nothing out of a metaphor. Tulkas would be excited, excited at an explosion turning into a larger explosion. What of the Children? She knows little of the Secondborn. What would the Silmaril's maker think of Her deed? He might be interested, at first. If only to point out mistakes on Her part, the next moment. Is She going against the Song? Or is She furthering it? The oxygen dam breaks. She wills another one inside it; oxygen won't do. Silicon. Yet, now the star reacts badly upon the added layer, like one of Yavanna's beasts to a coating of wood upon its heart. It shakes and thrashes, it sends out cries in the form of tall arching waves of fire. Much of its skin is lost to the void in those cries, and this makes pressure go down for a moment, but only for a moment. This won't do. 

She lifts Her head, and calls upon other stars. This is a rich region, but as far from the others that to the Children's eyes it might appear as the tiniest prick of light. Did She choose this place out of foresight? Did she choose it out of fear for what She's doing? Stars align in Her palm like marbles, and Her fingers probe them. Three She chooses, blue as Ulmo's seas under midday sun, and She adds them to the starting one. Like pearls upon a string they dance, like sands in a stream they merge; She has to cup Her hands around them to keep most of their fire from escaping, though. Yet another interference. The new star is bulging and far, far larger than the others; not overly so, but it shivers as much of its skin is shed with each breath. She touches its core, and She founds it lacking. The shocks of this unnatural birth will tear it apart soon. Not soon by the Children's standards, not soon by Ainu's standards, even, and yet. No. This will not do. More stars. Other stars. Strangers stars, even those that do not burn but sizzle, She calls upon them all, and it's like playing with marbles again, yet this time She just wills them against each other, into a ball of blue fire which grows and grows, a tumor of light and growing desperation on Her part. Is She doing something akin to Aulë's deed with His people? Is She doing something akin to their brother's deeds with Orcs and Trolls and Dragons? The star shrieks its disapproval, praying for solace, but She does not cover Her eyes She does not shy Her ears away. Was their brother scared of Her because of this? Because of the bloated, uneven _monster_  She's putting together? Is this the Song? Is this their brother's notes? Fear, as She saw in their brother's black eyes, now fills Her heart also. Frenzy dances upon Her fingers. More stars. And stranger things, more exotic things, things that hide in the shadow of the stars, things that She has named not. All into the fire they go. Into the blue light, a corpse-light upon the void that it all calls upon itself. Other things happen now, things She didn't will. Layers upon layers, the entire monster starts putting itself together and yet separating in compartments, the outer ones growing redder, as if in anger. This monster born of hydrogen and helium secretes carbon, oxygen, silicon, argon. Titanium. Each layer thinner and more frantic than the one before. She adds more. Something else is happening, something new, something She had yet to see. Is this the Song? She prays it's the song. Her fingers keep the monster together now. Her fingers and Her will, She's restraining it, She's keeping it whole, and in a flash She comes to see that as the original star was helpless to stop itself against the Song, so Her hands are now. The monster has grown too large. She can keep it whole, She can keep it alight, but something else is taking over, something new and old, something not as old as She, but mightier still. Chrome. Chrome now coats the monster's heart, and for a moment it looks like it can last, but no, no it sheds and the core shrinks and the layer bulge and She feels She cannot contain this light any more than the Children may by their hands withhold the sea's tide. She thought Her stars greater than Ulmo's waves and stronger than Aulë's fires. Now she finds herself hugging the monster tight, keeping it closer to Her heart, murmuring empty words of excuse. Manganese. Manganese now covers the star's heart. Or what used to be a star. It's bloated beyond recognition, only its wail, reaching higher, reaching farther is a echo of its starting cries. And it's just a moment, before She can think of ways to amend Her deed, before She can reach to Her beloved, who sits closest to the One and would help Her in Her foolishness, before She can even pray for the One's forgiveness, it happens.

 

Iron. 

 

Iron is the final threshold. The monster coats its heart with iron.

 

It's a mistake.

 

A mistake that lasts not longer than the time it takes one of the Children to close their fist. The star shrieks, and it's a shriek veiled in blue and red and green and white; then it gulps, and it rebounds against its core, and it shrieks again, stronger this time, almost as strong as Their treacherous brother's cry while he was under attack of the Spider. And far-reaching. Plumes of gas, something akin to the work of Her beloved and Aulë extend like burnt wings out of the core. She already sees the seed of new stars inside them, and something is lifted from Her heart, for maybe not all is lost. Maybe half. Then She turns to look at that lost half, and She has to cup Her hands in front of Her mouth as the Children do.

The wings of gas now are stretched into a disk, growing slowly as it laps at the void beyond, and encircling the void beneath. Was this how the Silmaril's maker felt when he did his greatest deed? Was this how Their treacherous brother felt when he warped the Orcs? Words battle inside Her to describe what She sees. Or not sees. It's like an absence, an absence of light, only the more deep for its greatness. So deep and so strong it warps and bends all the echoes of the Song. Would it bend the Song itself? What has She, in Her foolishness, made? She walks closer, and yet again Her garments feel no tug, but She knows that there's no thing in all of Arda, no creature, no Children, no matter, no work of the hand and the mind which could withstand this monster. Thoughts and time both She sees the monster rend. It's skin is black. What of the insides?

 

She has felt no fear, not even in the face of the Flying Dragon's hosts before Thangorodrim, not even when the Trees were extinguished. But now there's fear and its slick and oily and it grips around Her heart, in a cage not unlike the cage of iron which turned Her star into this. This corpse. Has She failed the Song? Has She failed the One? Will Her beloved shun Her? What is inside? Is this Their treacherous brother's doing? Did he plant a seed of madness into Her mind?

 

No. No, She thinks as She walks towards the edge of nothing, beyond trails of gas as hot as the old star's core, as they are stretched and bent beyond recognition, beyond salvation; no. No, this is Her doing and Her doing only. She wanted to test. She wanted to see. And now what She sees escapes seeing. A hand, put onto the thing's skin. It doesn't pulsate like the star, it doesn't rumble like other things do, like the very surface of Arda does, with the echoes of its bowels. It... it does something else. She enters the nothingness.

 

It's not even black. Black is a colour, is absence of colour, some might say. Here, She understands, it's not nothing, it's everything, compressed to the point of being more alike to a concept than to something that exists. And it sings. Faint, faint, but even this monster sings. A low voice, lower than the notes the moving earth makes when it shakes, lower than the voices of the stars, and much thinner. It's a fleeting thought, but maybe, just maybe. Maybe Their treacherous brother would have liked this place. If only it could contain him. She stays there for She knows not how much, because here - is there a here even? - time is stretched into figments and is not time anymore, like hair from a Firstborn's head might make bowstrings, yet the metaphor is lacking. This all new to Her. Yet. There's some kind of peace here. It's nice.

 

Later - or was it before? She cannot say - She comes out of the monster, and holds a hand on its skin, takes a prick of its substances, She holds it against the void. It's but a nail of the monster's hide, and yet it could withstand on its own the whole weight of Arda. But what happens now? The nail is wailing, is singing, and as its singing grows it turns brown, red, white and in a flash of blue and one last note it turns into a whisper of gas, soon to be whisked away by the rest of the monster's body.

 

She walks away from the monster, leaving it there to try and satisfy its unending full-hollowness. She walks as far away that starlight begins anew, and it bends around the monster, showing it's presence by its absence. And there, She stops. Was this the reason Their brother was afraid of Her? Because She could, in Her foolishness, forfeit something under Her dominion to the rule of the Song? To deem this right would be a brush to Her ego. To feel like She could, by Her deeds alone, put fear inside the heart of who used to be the mightiest of all beings. Untold years of Her beloved's company told Her otherwise. It's not what She did, it's not what She could do. And as She reflects upon this, stars all around Her are whisked away; She is tempted to hold them. To keep them from the monster's reach. But a spark of wisdom tells Her not to. Tells Her to see what the Song has in store for Her. And so She looks upon the stars, the rivers of stars, falling into the monster's embrace, closer and closer, to the point She truly becomes afraid the monster she created will eat away at Her sky. 

 

It doesn't happen. The trails of stars stabilize, and they grow in a circle, ever disturbed, so that in time they turn into something more akin to a spiral, denser in the core, and sparse and cold in the outer reaches. Such a structure She has never seen. She lifted stars together before,She put them into trails and figures for the Children's pleasure or to inspire them, or to warn them. But this. This is not of her making, not of her intention. She thinks of the speech Yavanna did when She told them how only once She could make the Trees, and something like that She feel is taking place here. There are of course words for this in the Firstborn language. Many, many words. As many words are are stars. So full of stars. And other things. The monster's tug, the monster's hunger, changed them.

 

And in a flash, insight strikes Her like an arrow from _Oromë's_ mighty bow. Comprehension. It was not the monster Her treacherous brother was afraid of. It was not its degenerate matter. It was not Her power. 

She walks towards one of the closest stars, a small, red one, and She sees small rocky worlds around it. They dance their relentless dance. Still hot, still burning, as the Children's spawn is incomplete in their first moments. But given time? She can see all of them. Red stars, blue stars, yellow stars. And all those worlds. Ripen worlds, worlds ready for creatures. Worlds full of ore, where exotic minerals would have Aulë cry out of joy. World covered by waters, world where oceans as deep as Arda was thick rested beneath a thin crust. And more, many more, as many as there were grain of sands on all of Arda's shores, as many shores as there were, as many as there are , as many as there will be.

 

And Her brother, so full of himself, so focused on just one of these grains of sands, falling at last. Just a single one. And all the others, forever lost.

 

Maybe it was the part of Her that was in Her brother, to forewarn him and kindle fear in his heart, fear and despair at how much he fought over so little. Maybe it was, and that was a more disquieting thought, the part of Her brother inside of Her. She has no answer to that question. So She just beholds the fruit of Her foolishness. The monster in the middle, lurking, sleeping, ever hollow. The trails of stars, now closer to each other, now held together. And in those spirals She hears the Song.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have always thought that, given how Tolkien spent time to even create names for the different layers of Arda's atmosphere, there was a hint somewhere that Varda is not Queen of Stars in a Tolemaic sense, where she rests upon a sphere of fixed stars blinking like lamps out of a hollowed shell, but that She, alone among the Valar, might get glimpses of other worlds, of other places. There's a hint of heresy in this idea, but it's delicious heresy. It also brings somewhat closer Tolkien's and Lewis' Perelandra works. And, if that's truly how it is, and Varda is Queen of the Stars in the modern, astrophysics sense, then it truly is the only thing able to strike fear into Morgoth's heart. For when Varda shunned him in the beginning, he didn't just lost the eventual wife to his brother. He lost the entire universe.


End file.
